With recent advances in electronic medical records (EMRs) and the widespread adoption of electronically-recorded medical data, there exist vast repositories of information related to the medical industry. However, these data are often sourced from many different entities. For example, medical practitioners, payors, insurance carriers, hospitals, clinics, laboratories, governmental organizations, and charitable organizations, among others, may record, store, or otherwise manage some aspect of data related to diseases, diagnoses, treatments, outcomes, symptoms, prognoses, or clinical studies, or even result-based data of individual physicians or hospitals.
Electronic medical records, for example, are typically prepared and managed by the creator of the record, generally a health care practice or facility. Diagnostic laboratories may prepare and manage data related to individual clinical specimens in order to determine information about the health of a patient. These data are often stored in a database separate from or in addition to the EMR record. Additionally, healthcare payors may prepare and manage data related to the financial side of the healthcare of a patient or the efficiency of effectiveness of the treating practitioner. Clearly, each sourcing entity has different objectives and motivations. There is thus very little continuity between the datasets of the above-described entities, despite the fact that the data may all be related to healthcare, and even the health care of the same patient.
In addition to a lack of continuity in dataset formats and sources from medical providers and payors, patients also contribute to the challenges of managing and present information about medical data and records. Patients may see different providers and obtain different diagnostics tests without the providers being aware that second opinions have been sought by the patient. Datasets across all of the providers and payors for a given patient can thus show conflicting information, even for the same patient in ostensibly the same circumstances.
As the healthcare industry shifts in the way medical practitioners are affiliated, medical practitioners are moving from independent, self-employed entities to employees of a particular clinic or hospital. Analysts expect that the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PP ACA), which reforms certain aspects of the private health insurance industry and public health insurance programs, will further propagate this shift. Accordingly, there may be more opportunities for practice groups in a given provider or organization to want to compare practice results and patient outcomes across the group or organization.
It would be desirable to provide for better tools and techniques for improving the ability to easily and efficiently compare medical data in an automated, computerized system using a variety of visualization tools that can accommodate medical data sourced from various entities.